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Leon Bonvin, Cook with Red Apron, 1862 👩‍🍳 The cook has been identified as Bonvin's wife, Constance Felicite Gaydon, in their small family tavern in Vaugirard, France. The scene is full of familiar everyday details: Constance chops a large cabbage, and is surrounded by other common vegetables like turnips, leeks, carrots and lettuce. Light illuminates a basket, candlesticks, a coffee mill, and a big copper pot 🥕🥬🍲 Despite the rich beauty of his work, Bonvin was not appreciated in his own time. After falling into financial difficulty, his work rejected by Parisian art dealers, he hanged himself in 1866 at the young age of 32 😭
'To eat humble pie', meaning to humiliatingly recant your words 😳 'Umbles' or 'numbles' were the internal organs of deer, a food that was recommended for inferior banquets in Tudor times, so that to 'eat umble pie' came to mean to eat below your social status 🦌 Samuel Pepys ate umble pie in 1662: 'I having some venison given me a day or two ago, and the umbles baked in a pie, and all very well done' 👌 Unsurprisingly given their similarity, over time the word 'umble' - from the Old French word for meat 'loins' - became confused with 'humble', which has a completely different linguistic root, meaning of 'lowly rank'. 🥧 Image: wikimedia commons
A toothpick pendant in the shape of a mermaid 🧜‍♀️ Late 16th century, Italian. Made of gold, pearl, and rubies ✨ Image ©️ Trustees of the British Museum
The Temptation of St. Anthony, Hieronymus Bosch c. 1525, showing St Anthony with his pet pig 🐖 The Egyptian hermit lived in the desert for 20 years where he was repeatedly tempted by the devil (note the strange scary creatures surrounding him in this image) 😈 After his trial, he was praised by the Hospitallers (a religious order) for having reportedly healed one of their pigs which roamed freely through the medieval streets 🐖 These stories have merged so that some claim that it was actually an evil pig sent by the devil that tempted Anthony in the desert! 😈🐷 In some Catholic countries people have traditionally brought pigs to church on his holy day to be blessed, and saved one pig from the slaughter in commemoration 🐽
The Paston Treasure, c. 1663. A unique oil painting showing the rich collection of the Paston family of Oxnead Hall near Norfolk. It is painted by a Dutch artist in the 'vanitas' still life genre, in which luxurious objects were combined with objects symbolising the passing of time and death- a means of both showing off material wealth and moral literacy ☠️ Amongst the exotic objects is a collection of delicious fruits, including oranges, grapes, apples, lemons, and plums. The open peach symbolised fertility and eroticism. A lobster is also included as a symbol of wealth, gluttony and temptation🦞 We can see a number of intricately decorated cups made of shells in the Paston collection, again exotic and expensive wares 🍹
The eulachon fish is also known as the candlefish because it is so rich in oil that once dried people have historically inserted a wick into it and used it as a candle 🕯️ The fish was very important to native diet in the Pacific Coast, with the name 'eulachon' or 'oolichan' coming from the Chinookan language 🐟 The Niska people specialised in making oolichan grease, made from the decomposed bodies of the fish, which was then traded for other commodities 💰 The second image comes from the diary of William Clark, a North American explorer, the first depiction of the species in the Columbia River in 1805 📝
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